I was the first one in my family to go away to college. I came from a small town where there was no guidance in the high school at all. It was a mill town, and I never knew anyone who made their living from the arts. When you did go away to college, you went away to be something - an engineer, or a teacher, or a chemist.

The Chinese are brought up to believe that you should be silent in class. The teacher speaks, and you just listen and absorb what they say.

Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don't get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.

At 16, when I was at Henry M. Gunn High School, I had a crush on the English teacher, and my grades improved dramatically. This great school had only 400 students, mostly children of Stanford professors, and it was more usual to have classes under one of the oak trees dotted around the campus than in the classroom.

In my primary school, there was one book for five children. We always had to share, so you hoped you read at the same level as your friend. This library at my primary school was special. It was funded by USAID through American Institutes for Research and the International Book Bank, working with a local NGO called Malawi Teacher Training Activity.

My acting teacher in high school was really influential, and we still keep in touch.

My mother was a teacher. She was grooming my brother and me to be successful, accomplished people.